palabras ARACELI CRUZ

Artist Kiki Valdes is about to break. In just a few hours he's scheduled to "action paint," and the guy who hired him for the gig is trying to swindle him out of some money.

[Action Artist: An artist creating a painting live, adjoined by music]

"I’m not a car salesman," Valdes says, "I’m a painter."

This 25-year-old Cuban-American isn't one to be messed with. Valdes― valiant, bald head and broad stature― has learned a thing or two about the business. The contemporary artist has been action painiting since 2002.

He studied at the prestigious New World School of the Arts in Miami, which is where he honed his skills as a bold, controversial, and radical artist. His work conveys pain, lust, struggle, pride, love, and the list of emotions goes on. And it’s expressed through his rich colors and thick and heavy strokes.

Valdes' evolution to action painting came about through his passion for his music and the Miami social scene. His first stab at action painting was a spontaneous process.

"I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. The band started playing and I just started painting," Valdes says.

With each performance, Valdes got more and more positive feedback. The artist had a niche to showcase his voluminous work to an audience― the same people that inspire him.

The spontaneity of action painting can be quite distracting. There's the change of music tempo, people watching your every move, people talking, ideas flowing left and right, but Valdes says that's all part of the experience. His paintings are so multi-layered that if a different idea comes to him while painting, he just paints over it.

"One minute it's a woman. The next minute it's four women, and then the next it's a horse," Valdes says.

Each piece that Valdes paints is like creating a whole new entity.

"It's like building the skeleton, and then muscle and then skin…they're like bodies."

The intimacy element that Valdes exposes through his work can be attributed to his connection with the subjects and it's evident in pieces such as Aquarius Propaganda, JewBans and La Salsa.

"I don’t choose who I paint. It's like dreaming...you don't choose your dreams."

With the many influences that Valdes has, (people often compare his work to Basquiat) it's no wonder his work is not only fascinating but thought provoking.

"I'm influenced by artists from the past, and reading up on American painters, German expressionists, impressionists...I like to see how they did things and relate it to what I’m doing. I'm not doing anything different, I'm just renewing tradition."

Some of that tradition is directly attributed to his own heritage.

In a 2001 trip to Cuba, Valdes did about 33 paintings― paintings that he has yet to exhibit.

"I'm waiting for the right time," he says.

I'm sure Valdes' followers will be anticipating that show.